


Diamonds and Diaspora

by JayJEx



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Coming Out, Diaspora, F/M, M/M, Multi, Trip - Freeform, Vacation, background pynch, sarchengsey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 07:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19126978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayJEx/pseuds/JayJEx
Summary: “We should go to China,” Henry announces, sweeping into the room with all of his usual bombast and ostentatiousness. Gansey and Blue, both well used to his vaguely insane antics, barely pause their respective activities.“Why do you say that?” Gansey asks, glancing upwards from his book at Henry.“You like history, there are historical things in China,” Henry responds.Gansey frowns. “I’m really more of an expert in Welsh history and mythology, specifically -““And you, Blue,” he continues over Gansey’s protest. “You like...Chinese takeout, right?”Jane looks up from her computer, also frowning. “I’m more into Thai food, if I’m being honest -““Great!” Henry clasps his hands in front of him excitedly, “then it’s decided. We’re going to China next. I’ll go get the paperwork for our visas,” he says, and then immediately leaves the room, the matter decided.





	Diamonds and Diaspora

“We should go to China,” Henry announces, sweeping into the room with all of his usual bombast and ostentatiousness. Gansey and Blue, both well used to his vaguely insane antics, barely pause their respective activities.

“Why do you say that?” Gansey asks, glancing upwards from his book at Henry.

“You like history, there are historical things in China,” Henry responds.

Gansey frowns. “I’m really more of an expert in Welsh history and mythology, specifically -“

“And you, Blue,” he continues over Gansey’s protest. “You like...Chinese takeout, right?”

Jane looks up from her computer, also frowning. “I’m more into Thai food, if I’m being honest -“

“Great!” Henry clasps his hands in front of him excitedly, “then it’s decided. We’re going to China next. I’ll go get the paperwork for our visas,” he says, and then immediately leaves the room, the matter decided.

Gansey turns to Jane, who looks back at him, equally nonplussed. She shrugs.

* * *

“So,” Adam’s voice sounds different through his speakers now that he’s back in the Barns for the summer instead of his tiny dorm room. “You’re going to China, next?”

“Yes,” Gansey responds, bright. He’d been worried about Adam, going to college so soon after - everything, not willing to let anything come between him and his dreams of leaving as soon as possible. But Adam looks good, positively radiant on the other side of the screen. “Henry has offered to navigate for us.”

“Can Cheng even speak Chinese?” Ronan’s voice comes from the background, sounding somewhat distant.

Henry calls out something in Chinese from his position behind Gansey, not even looking up from his search for plane tickets.

“Fuck you too, Cheng,” is the responding yell. Adam rolls his eyes.

“Anyway,” Adam continues, “China.”

“Yes,” Gansey repeats.

“Do you know where you’re going yet?” Adam asks. Opal shrieks something in the background, streaking across Gansey’s screen briefly, holding _something_ aloft over her head as she runs. Ronan swears, and then he’s in the shot too, chasing after her. Adam doesn’t even blink.

Henry somehow knows to laugh without even looking up.

“We’re still not sure of the details,” Gansey responds, deciding to ignore whatever was happening behind Adam (he can’t imagine Adam would ignore if it were serious). “We’re thinking Shanghai for a couple days, then Beijing, and then Wu - Wuhan -“ he looks back to where Henry sits for confirmation. He nods, “- Wuhan, for a bit, to meet Henry’s family.”

“His family?” Adam’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s pretty serious.”

“It is, yes,” Gansey can hear some of his nervousness at the prospect slip into his voice.

“Are you planning to tell them? About you guys’ relationship?” Adam asks, straight to the point as always. This gets Henry’s attention. He looks up from his computer.

They had discussed it, the three of them, but they hadn’t decided just yet. At least, the three of them _together_ hadn’t decided yet. He and Jane had talked, apart from Henry, and agreed to follow Henry’s wishes, no matter what they were.

“We don’t know yet,” Gansey admits. Adam hums.

“You know,” Adam says, looking like he’s had a particularly dark thought and found it kind of funny, “I guess Ronan and I are kind of lucky. We don’t have to deal with that sort of stuff,” he smiles, wry.

Gansey feels his face fall. “Oh Adam,” he says, quieter than before.

“If his family sucks,” Gansey hears Ronan’s voice call, “just beat the shit out of them and leave. It’s easy,” and Adam laughs, and Henry looks mock offended, and Gansey smiles again. He had forgotten, in the time that they were apart, how refreshing Ronan can be.

And then he hears a huge crash come from through his speakers. Adam finally looks up, and Gansey can see the exact moment his heart stops.

“Opal,” he says, like he’s talking to a predator who’s sizing him up for a meal, “put that down _right now_.” Opal's response is the most unholy shriek Gansey has ever heard in his life that his ears are mercifully somewhat spared from by the volume setting on his laptop. Adam glances back at Gansey, and with a hasty “gotta go, sorry,” he hangs up.

“They seem well,” Henry comments, and then turns back to face his computer again.

* * *

They, after some struggle, compromised, and booked a flight with seats in Economy+ with priority boarding. Gansey had, of course, fought for first class, which Blue had shot down immediately out of her strange desire to refuse to allow anyone to pay for things for her no matter how much they want to, though Gansey had learned better than to fight with her too much about it. Henry, for his part, had limited his complaining to a nonchalant and only slightly haughty sniff at the smaller than usual seat, and an offhand comment about the quality of the _hóng sháo ròu_ they had been served as the in flight meal.

Gansey himself hadn't minded. First class means more luxury, and a nicer seat, and better amenities and service, but it also means a private seat, a cubby wall separating you from your neighbor. It meant that their arrangement, of Blue by the window leaning her head onto Henry who took full advantage of the extra leg room to get his legs all tangled with Gansey's as the three of them giggled over B-rated English action films and cheesy Chinese karate movies, would have been impossible. Gansey would have given as many Glendowers as it took for that.

And the food in first class wasn't _that_ much better, if he was honest.

They step off the plane and into the terminal of Shanghai-Pudong Airport, stretching their legs and rolling their shoulders. Henry, eyes behind a ridiculous pair of ray-bans that he for some reason had decided to put on despite the fact that it was six in the evening, steps in front of him and stretches his arms wide, as if to present to him the terminal with it's uncomfortable seats and harsh fluorescent lighting. "Welcome to China," he says, theatrical and whimsical as ever.

* * *

He first noticed it before they had even left the airport, the quiet shift in Henry's demeanor. They followed the crowd out of the terminal, shuffling past the desks where they filled out their arrival cards. Jane sees it first, because it's in her nature to seek out _injustice_ and _abuse of power_ and all of the other things that Gansey had spent his childhood being very carefully not educated about.

She wrinkled her nose at the fingerprint machines. "Why do they need our fingerprints?" she demands.

Gansey considers it, for a moment. If he were a government official creating the protocol to enter into a country, what reason would he have to ask for fingerprints? "Perhaps it is so that they can easily identify people who commit a crime," he offers.

Jane's open disdain only grows. " _Perhaps_ it's so that China can maintain its information state status and strengthen its stranglehold on the freedom of it's citizens and -"

And Gansey has read, before, that people feel frozen when they witness disasters. That it unfolds before them in slow motion, and they can see every moment, every split second of carnage, and still find themselves unable to act. He'd never really understood how it could be, how anyone could see a disaster but fail to do anything about it. At least, he'd never understood it until right here, right now, in the middle of Shanghai-Pudong Airport where he can experience it first hand, can see it unfolding before him, like a figurative train wreck in motion: Henry is about _interrupt Jane_ while she's _ranting_.

"Blue, dearest," he says, and it actually manages to stop her, because Henry sounds _urgent_ in a way that he's never heard before. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but is there any way you could please keep your voice down?"

Gansey gulps.

"Keep my voice down?" she asks, deadly quiet, a calm before a proverbial storm.

Henry nods, and glances behind him. Gansey follows his gaze to man dressed in a security outfit, casually eyeing the travelers passing behind him. Jane follows it too, and clenches her mouth shut when she sees him, in silent understanding.

"It's not like they'll ever use it," Henry says, rubbing soothing circles on to Jane's back. "You're only one traveler. You're entering legally. And you're certainly not going to commit any crimes."

She turns and presses her finger against the machine, in silent resignation.

* * *

The Four Seasons Pudong Hotel is a much more luxurious place than Gansey had thought they'd be able to stay during their trip. Gansey had thought Jane would never agree to it, but Henry had shown her a picture of the bathrooms in one of the hotels in the price range she had suggested, and she had folded, thoroughly disgusted, and resigned herself to whatever her boyfriends deigned to be "a reasonable place to stay," on the condition that they only booked a regular, single hotel room for all three of them.

She had then reluctantly agreed to book a double room, because Henry had mentioned that three young people booking a single would raise some eyebrows. This meant they found themselves all cuddled up on one of the two small twin beds, Henry sandwiched snugly between, as he put it, "his two favorite things in the whole wide world," while the other bed sat entirely unused. Gansey hoped the cleaning staff knew how to hold their tongues.

It also meant that they all had to share a single bathroom.

"Hurry up, Cheng!" Jane pounded on the door to the bathroom. If Gansey didn't know better, he'd say she almost looked like she regretted her insistence on only booking one room for all of them.

"Give me just another moment, love," came Henry's voice, sounding far less rushed than anyone who had Jane pounding on their door should be. "I just need another second," he said, followed by the unmistakeable sound of his hairspray.

"Why do they even let people take hairspray on planes? Isn't that stuff flammable? Shouldn't it be banned?" Jane groans, flopping onto the bed besides Gansey. He pats her hand, in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. She sighs. "Why are we here?" she asks, and Gansey knows she means it in a joking _why have we been put here on Earthto suffer_ way, but still. 

"You know why we're here," he responds, looking at the bathroom. She looks up from where she had been previously trying to suffocate herself into the bed.

"Obviously I know why we're here," she snorts, "that's not what I meant."

"I know why we're here too," Henry exits the bathroom, finally, looking prim and spiffy as ever. "We're here to have a sick ass time," he says, making jazz hands for the theatrics.

"Finally," says Jane, getting up, "I can pee."

* * *

They're in the Shanghai History Museum when Gansey's sees it again, the subtle change. They're exploring exhibits ranging from ancient Chinese pottery to pictures of communist revolutionaries, and Gansey is _enthralled_ even though they managed to misspell words like _house_ and _the_ several times in the English descriptions of items. Henry is as confidant and natural here as he is everywhere else, all quick smiles smooth movements as he makes a big show of trying and failing to read the Chinese characters. Jane, on the other hand, is not so enchanted.

"It's - the same as everywhere else," she says, and Gansey is offended.

_It's not_ , he wants to insist, because when she says the same, he thinks she means _the same wars, the same linearity of history, the same beliefs and cultures and artifacts -_

But then she says, "It's all just men," and he understands.

"My most sincere apologies that the Shanghai History Museum is not feminist enough," Henry says, and probably only _he_ could say a line like that and make it sound completely genuine.

But then Blue sighs, and she speaks. "Honestly, China's such a patriarchal shit show. Where's the exhibits about foot-binding, and the expectations placed on women in their society-" and Gansey notices it, the same tenseness in Henry as before.

"Is that really so accurate?" he asks her quietly, and Gansey thinks he must have a death wish.

She bristles, put on the defensive. "Are you saying it's not?" she asks, probing. He thinks it's a sign of how much they love and trust each other that she didn't _immediately deign to kill him on the spot._

"Of course it's not inaccurate to say that China is 'a patriarchal shit show,'" he says, still quiet, still bunched up like a spring, "but it is inaccurate to say that it is _uniquely so._ "

Jane's eyes narrow. "Chinese women had their feet _bound_ to restrict their movement and force them to conform to societies expectation of what women should look like," she says.

"And western women were forced to wear corsets for the exact same reason," Henry responds. For a tense moment, he and Jane stare each other down, until Jane looks away, at another exhibit.

A silk wedding gown, the inscription reads. Worn by the wife of a Ming dynasty prince. Whoever wrote the inscription forgot to add a space between the words _worn_ and _by_ , so the words mash together into a single word, _wornby_. It's the most beautiful shade of blue Gansey has ever seen.

"Chinese women keep their last names, you know," Henry says. "When they marry." He lets his hand fall to his side, deliberately. An offering.

"Marriage is an oppressive institution," she says. She takes his hand in her own. Gansey watches the tension bleed out of Henry's back, as if flowing from a wound, somewhere.

* * *

They pack more fun into the few days they spend in Shanghai than they sometimes do on whole other trips. Normally, when they arrive somewhere new, they're forced to take some time to orient themselves, find the lay of the land, figure out what the fun things to do are. But Henry knows a lot of places, and he takes them to even more places than he knows. They go shopping in huge, multi-story, shining shopping centers. They eat food from dirt-cheap street vendors that taste better than most of the food in Henrietta. They dance in the street with old women that Henry says are called _dàmā_. They buy gifts, an ornate bookmark for Adam with golden tassels (that are most certainly fake, considering Henry got the old man who sold it to them to haggle the price down to the equivalent of three USD), and a T-shirt for Ronan with a picture of Peppa Pig and the words _Gagnsta Life_ printed on the front that is most certainly a size or two too small for him.

On their last night in Shanghai, Henry takes them on a walk along a pier across the river from the iconic skyline that Gansey had only seen in pictures before, the one with the buildings, tall and shining and glowing with lights. Nothing, he thinks, could have prepared him for the way Henry and Blue look together, their hair caught in the wind, radiant against the skyline at their backs as they lean against the wall overlooking the water and badger him to take a picture of them.

It almost hurts to look at them. He forgets how to breathe.

* * *

They take the train to from Shanghai to Beijing, and Jane reluctantly allows herself to be checked into the Shangri La hotel. She's wearing a cheesy "I <3 S H" shirt, which is probably in poor taste now that they're no longer even in Shanghai, but Gansey gets the impression that the city had actually made a good impression on her.

"Honestly," she says, as they step into their _very reasonably decorated and not excessive at all room,_ "not to sound like a stick in the mud but I think I would have been happy to spend that whole trip in Shanghai."

"Don't be silly, my lily, lily Blue," Henry says with a laugh. "To be honest, I'd just about run out of cool things to do in Shanghai, so our timing couldn't have been more perfect."

Gansey laughs as well, in good spirits. "We wouldn't happen to have a spare day to see the museum here, would we?" he asks, and Blue is rolling her eyes.

Henry turns his gaze onto him, grinning. "Don't be silly, Gansey-boy," he says, looking over his shoulder, twirling his sunglasses in his hands. "You don't need a museum. This whole city is history incarnate," he says, almost casually, as if he wasn't aware that he had just simultaneously lit every spark of passion in Gansey's heart.

"This 'living history' better taste better than that _shaw lang bow_ thing," Jane grumbles.

" _Xiǎo lóng bāo_ ," Henry corrects her.

* * *

Their first couple of days in Beijing go splendidly. They see Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City, and go paddle-boating and eat strange bean flavored popsicles at the summer palace. They take a subway and then a train and then a cable care to the top of the Great Wall and run themselves ragged just trying to walk between two of the guard towers. They see the Beijing opera, and they buy a novelty souvenir toy doll that can change it's face, like the opera singers changed their masks, even though they know they have no use for it.

It so much fun that Gansey almost forgets about _the shift_ , the way that Henry's back had straightened like someone had dropped the weight of the world onto it.

Almost forgets.

* * *

They're sitting at another restaurant at the top of one of the fancy shiny shopping centers and Henry is ordering them more food than three people can possibly eat when it happens again. He's so full of _crispy fried shrimp that made his tastebuds sing_ and _ribs that made his mouth water at just their smell_ and _honeyed sautéed vegetables_ and _noodles drowning in flavorful sauce_ that when the waiter comes and sets a tray down of finely sliced meat and little thin crépe like slices and sauce, he nearly groans in pain.

"Ah, yes," Henry clapped his hands loudly, garnering the attention of several of the nearby tables. "You _must_ try this one," he says, picking up his chopsticks and arranging the meat with some vegetables on the crépe-adjacent piece of dough. "The world famous Peking Duck!" He folds the dough neatly around the meat and places it on Gansey's plate.

"Oh," Gansey says, suddenly remembering. "I've heard of this dish before!" He'd read about it while he was doing research on things to see in China, before he'd figured out that Henry had apparently made an itinerary, and a backup itinerary, and a list of indoor activities to do in case it rained, and also a map of Beijing with honest to God color-coded pins stuck in specific landmarks and restaurants that Henry wanted to visit and he'd decided to just leave the trip planning part to Henry this time around. "Though, I thought it was called Beijing duck."

Henry blinked. "It is called Beijing Duck," he says.

"No," Jane pointed out. Her own duck-wrap was a little bit more lopsided than Henry's, but from the way she moaned when she bit into it, he figured it must have tasted just as delicious anyway. "You said it was called Peking Duck."

"Oh," Henry says, waving his hand dismissively. "Peking is just what Beijing used to be called. They mean the same thing," he explains.

"Why did the name change," Gansey wondered, as was his disposition to do. He'd been so distracted by the question that he'd almost missed the shift this time, the subtle way his smile hollowed out, the way his shoulders lifted as his back drew itself straight, like he'd been pulled taught by the end of a string.

Jane caught it this time as well, if her worried expression was anything to go by.

"I don't know," Henry admits, quietly. "I don't know why the name changed." Jane watches him, silently, waiting for Henry to continue, but he only continues to sit in stiff silence.

"I don't know why either," Gansey says, bringing his foot to rest gently against Henry's leg under their table. Jane reaches out for his hand from beside him.

"Of course you don't," Henry says. "You're not Chinese." 

"Well -" Gansey responds, and it's on the tip of the tongue, to say _well neither are you, really_ but he's saved by the arrival of the waiter. He stops himself, watches the waiter set down a plate of what looks like vaguely fried bones, and thinks of how close he'd come to - how he'd almost -

"Ah," says Henry, distractedly, "the rest of the duck is here."

Jane falls back in her seat with a groan, her hand resting on her stomach.

* * *

The hotel room in Wuhan wasn’t as nice as the one in Shanghai or the one in Beijing, but it was still _nice_ , and it was (according to Henry) the best hotel within walking distance of his grandparent’s house.

“So,” Gansey hears Jane from the other side of Henry’s body. They’re a sticky, sweaty pile of limbs on a too hard, too small bed, and Gansey wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world. “We’re going to meet your family soon.”

Gansey can feel the rumble of Henry’s response, his face pressed into Henry’s back. “Yeah,” Henry says, uncharacteristically quiet.

“Have you...decided?” Blue asks, after a moment. “Whether or not you’re going to -“

“Yeah,” Henry responds again.

“...yeah you’ve decided or yeah you’re going to tell them?”

“Yeah,” Henry says, “I’m going to tell them, I think.”

“Oh,” and Jane goes silent, and Henry stays silent, and Gansey thinks, desperately, for something, _anything_ to say that would ease the tension he feels in Henry’s shoulder blades, in the crease in his forehead that Gansey knows he gets when he’s worried, in the repeating clenching and the release of his fingers, like the cycles of stability and war they'd read about in the museums -

Outside of their window, someone up chucks the loudest, wettest loogie Gansey has ever heard and spits it out onto the ground.

Gansey can hear the disgust in Blue’s voice. “Did that guy just...” she trails off.

Henry sighs. “Yeah,” he says.

* * *

The buildings in the street around him are small, dirty, and packed close, closer than he thought buildings could be built to each other. People mill about the cracked, too narrow streets, selling wares on blankets on the ground. Operating shops and restaurants out of their one room houses. Using the worn, muddy public exercise fixtures.

Henry pulls him to the side, out of the way of a motorbike that very nearly ran him over.

"Whoops," Gansey says, startled out of his reverie. Henry's shaking, he realizes. Now that they're touching, it's easy to feel it, but he can't help but think that if he was watching, if he had been paying attention, he would have been able to see it, too. "Sorry about that," he says, "I wasn't paying attention." It's at an awkward angle, but he tries to keep his grip on Henry's arm.

Henry pulls away.

"We're almost there," he says, sounding more out of breath then than he had any other time of the trip, including when they'd scaled the Great Wall.

He looks at Jane, walking behind them both.

She shrugs.

* * *

There’s a lot of food in front of them, none of which Gansey knows the name of. There’s rice, of course, and roots that have been chopped at an angle and steamed, and boiled eggs, only their yolks look more yellow and crumbly than usual and they taste far saltier than normal, and ribs that are covered in sticky rice, and individual peanuts that are salted generously, and what Gansey had thought were noodles but are actually some kind of vegetable that had been cut into strips and drenched in sauce.

Someone, he thinks it might be Henry's grandma, his _nái-nai,_ hands him a vaguely triangular shaped lump wrapped in a leaf that he unwraps to find a chunk of rice, stickier than he’s used to. He watches the others at the table first, sees them cut a chunk of rice off with their chopsticks and dip it in a bowl that’s filled with salt before eating them. Gansey does this same, admittedly a little clumsier with chopsticks than he’d like to admit, and dips it into the bowl and puts it in his mouth -

Only, he realizes quickly, that it’s not salt, it’s _sugar_ , and it combines with the flavor of the rice to make something mushy, and sickly sweet, and it sits on his tongue _all wrong_ , but he forces himself to swallow it anyway, trying not to gag. Judging from the look on Blue’s face, she’s having similar thoughts.

Henry silently places pieces of rib on to his and Blue’s plates.

“Just eat chunks of it with the rib,” he says, glancing at him and Blue out of the corners of his eyes, his face locked into a fascimile of his usual charming smile. “It’ll taste better that way,” and then he immediately switches back to Chinese, laughing stiffly at something someone at the other end of the table says.

“Sorry,” Gansey apologizes, quietly following Henry’s advice. The rice is still sticky, and mushy, but the flavors clash less, and it goes down easier. “Sorry, I’m just - I’m not used to -“

“It’s ok,” Henry says, “ I agree. It tastes horrid,” he says, and then he laughs and tears another chunk of rice off and dips it in the sugar and eats it.

* * *

He hears them through the bathroom wall. They're not loud: none of them could be after what just happened. But the walls in the hotel are thin to a fault, and the door doesn't seal properly and it lets in the draft, so it also lets in their voices while they talk.

"What did she say?" he hears Jane.

"Nothing important," Henry responds, "Nothing you can't figured out on your own, anyway."

"But what did she say _exactly_?" she asks?

"You don't need to know what she -"

"Henry," she says emphatically, and Gansey can practically hear the silent plea. _Tell me what she said,_ Jane is asking, _tell me so I can prove her wrong_ , because she is Blue Sargent, and she will never meet a problem that she won't try to fight.

Henry remained silent, and Gansey can practically _see it_ again, the way he Henry's head had stayed bowed, his eyes closed, as his grandmother yelled and yelled and yelled and _yelled -_

He laughs. It's humorless, and it fizzles out and pops, crushed by the weight of the despair and tension around them.

"Honestly," he starts, like he's trying for _funny_ but _missing horribly_. Gansey can feel his heart shatter at the way his voice shakes at the end, just a little. "Out of everything, I think she was more upset that you guys aren't Chinese."

* * *

"Do you think this is ok?" Jane asks. She'd brought black attire with her in her luggage, but Henry had taken one look at the weather forecast for the day and swiftly banned her from wearing it for the day.

"It's too hot," he'd offered as an explanation, far more clipped and concise than Gansey thought he could ever be.

The outfit Jane had managed to cobble together was still probably more appropriate than the red polo and shorts that Gansey was wearing for the day. She had a black tank top and red skirt that might have looked like someone _could wear it to a funeral if you squint at it a little bit_ , which is probably the best she could get away with without _melting into a Jane shaped puddle from the moment she stepped outside._

Henry returns to the room before Gansey has a chance to respond, carrying a bundle of flowers in one hand and a bag in the other.

"Henry, you're back," Jane says, softly. "Is this-"

Henry shakes his head, face blank. He turns to Gansey, and then shakes his head again, with a sigh, looking down as if he can't bear to see them like this.

"You said dress casually," Blue protested. "It's not like I can wear my -"

"No red," Henry interrupts her again, still looking at the floor. "Anything else is fine. But you can't wear red."

 _Oh,_ Gansey thinks.

"Oh," Blue says.

* * *

They take a taxi to the graveyard. The road they took had long since turned from pavement to dirt, and the wall along the road got progressively dirtier and dirtier, but it was clear that the inside of the graveyard was fairly well kept. Henry paused a outside moment to exchange some words with the men attending the entrance before they all stepped in together. The graves reminded Gansey of the houses he'd seen on his way to meet Henry's grandmother: small and packed as close together as possible.

They stopped in front of a stone, nearly identical to all the other's around it, except for the writing on it that Gansey couldn't read anyway. Henry set the flowers down in front of the grave, and then set two candles on either side of the ash tray on the front of the grave. He pulled a matchbox out of the bag and lit the candles.

" _Yé-ye_ ," he says, _grandpa_ , like it was a prayer. He pulls three of the sticks out of a larger bundle in his bag and holds them up to the candle to burn. The tip slowly begins to turn to ash.

"Is that incense?" Gansey asks. Henry says nothing, only holds them at in front of him, his eyes frozen shut, his face unmoving, his body still except - except Gansey can see it, this time. The shaking of his arms. "What is it -"

"Can you wait," Henry asks him, eyes still firmly shut. "Just - just wait a second." And as Gansey watches, he lifts the incense up and bows his head, once, twice, three times. He sets the incense in the ash tray in the middle. Rips the petals off of the flowers, and spreads them on the top of the grave.

Gansey watches, and he thinks. He thinks about Henry, about how confidant and light and breezy he is. How he can worm his way into anything, just like he'd wormed his way into their friend group, even if they don't quite treat him the same, at first. He thinks about the way that Henry stands out, no matter where they go. He thinks about how this is the first time that he can remember Henry directly asking him to do something.

He thinks about how he's never looked like he's belonged in any place more than he does here, his face cold and stoic as he spread the petals of a flower over a gravestone.

"And no," Henry says, as they walk out. "I don't know what any of it is for."

(He's used to Blue making him think about this world, and his place in it. He's not quite used to Henry doing it.)

* * *

Gansey remembers, when he was young, learning about the process through which diamonds are formed. How under immense pressure, the carbon deep under earth shifted and fell into place and arranged themselves into the hardest structure known to man. Only, he knew that wasn't true. Diamond was brittle. It was easily cut at it's cleavage points. Easily molded into beautiful shapes for others by shaving away the ugly parts of itself until only a shining core remained.

But Gansey has no need of a diamond. Gansey needs _Henry_.

So when he finds himself in a taxi, pressed up against a window by Henry's unmoving body and he turns to find a face that's as cold as it is crystalline, he decides to take the risk.

"What do you think," he starts, "your grandfather would have thought about us?" he asks, and he can see the reaction instantly, in the subtle widening of his eyes, in Jane's shocked jerking of her head, though she says nothing for now.

Henry is quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts for a response. "I think," he starts, face still unmoving, but Gansey can see his eyes starting to cloud, the tears begin to pool, "I think he would have hated it as well

“Oh, Henry,” Gansey grabbed his hand from where it had been held stiffly against his lap, “it’s ok. You can cry.” _Come back to us,_ he pleas silently, repeatedly, like a prayer, or a mantra. _Please, come back_.

Henry shook his head. “It’s not,” he said, his face still locked stoically in the same position as before. "I can't"

Jane grabbed his other hand. “It _is_ Henry. You _can_. We’re -" Gansey can tell she's struggling to hold back her own tears, "we’re here for you, you can tell us if you’re -“

“I have to be strong,” Henry said, still holding his silent vigil. “That's what my mom always told me. I have to be strong, or else they won’t pass on. They'll never be happy. They'll never reach heaven.”

Gansey looks at him, crammed in the middle of a taxi, sandwiched between him and Blue, looks at the strain in his back as he sits up straight, his posture stubbornly perfect, his hair brushing against the ceiling as they bump along the road, looks at his face, his expression as beautiful and fragile as the porcelain statues they saw at the museum, looks at their linked hands, his grip strong and solid, even as he stands on the verge of breaking, and he wonders. He wonders how anyone could possibly bear to leave this for heaven.

He squeezes Henry’s hand, tight.

* * *

“Is that a thing, then?” Gansey asks later, his hands running gently through Henry’s thoroughly disheveled hair. Henry looks up at him from where he had buried his face into Gansey’s bare chest, questioning. Blue looks up too, draping her body lazily over Henry to fix her gaze on to him. “Looking strong so that the deceased can pass on?”

Henry’s head returns to its former place on his chest. Gansey feels his breath hitch, and for a second, he thinks he’s going to cry, but then Henry snorts, his head coming back up to laugh, hysterically.

“I have - I have no clue,” Henry admits, out of breath from his bout of laughter. “That’s what my mom told me, at the funeral. But honestly, I think she just didn’t want to deal with me crying. I really have no clue if it’s actually a thing or not” he says, like it’s an epiphany, like he’d just unlocked the secret to the universe. He settles back into Gansey’s chest, and Gansey can feel the tension seep out of his body. He and Blue lock eyes over Henry’s chest as his breathing evens slowly evens out.

She shrugs.

(He can’t use Google, still, but while Henry’s in the bathroom the next morning, he quietly loads Baidu on his phone and searches for Chinese funerary customs. None of the results are in English, so he spends a minute copying and pasting the article into a translator, sentence by sentence, filling in with inference and intuition where the software fails him. He finds out about incense, and prayer slips, and the dynamic between old and young, and Buddhist beliefs of reincarnation. He finds nothing about stoicism in the face of death.

He doesn’t mention it to Henry.)

* * *

“So,” Henry says as they step into LAX, somehow vibrant and full of life despite having spent the last fourteen hours of his life crammed into a glorified flying death trap, “that was China.”

“It was,” Gansey says,“interesting." He pauses. Looks straight at Henry. "And beautiful.”

“It was indeed,” Henry says, looking back at him.

"I loved it," Gansey says, still staring at Henry.

Jane takes his hand. “Thank you,” she says, quiet and tender and forceful in a way that only she can pull off, “for showing us your home.”

Henry laughs, lifting her hand up to press a gentle kiss against her knuckles. “My dearest Blue,” he says, eyes twinkling with a theatricality that Gansey had missed oh so very much. “Thank you for giving me a home,” he says.

Gansey reaches for his other hand.  


**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Thanks for reading. This one was hard to write at times, but I'm glad I ended up finishing it.
> 
> I thought a lot about my decision to make Gansey the POV character _du jour_. At first glance, I thought Henry would have made a much more fitting vehicle to tell this particular story, as he's the actual Chinese-American of the group, but, unfortunately, I think Henry as a character is fundamentally different from me in ways that made it difficult for me to write from his perspective. He's bombastic and loud and flirty, and I'm none of those things, and it would have been hard for me to write a story like this from his perspective without destroying his characterization (I'd still say I twist his characterization in this one. I left the books in America, and I can't use Google, so I have no way to check more about his character, so I mashed what little I could remember together with my own struggles of being a Gay Chinese American person and I ended up with a character more _inner conflict_ than _Henry_ ). I tried it, actually, and it came out a jumbled mess, like I had too many things to say, and not the words to say them which actually made some poetic sense to me: it's the same way I get when I try to speak to my relatives in Chinese. 
> 
> I also wanted to talk about my struggles with being unable to speak Chinese well, but if Henry couldn't speak Chinese, they wouldn't have realistically been able to navigate China without a translator, and I didn't want to have to write a translator character. And anyway, I think, ultimately, Gansey's perspective represents better the way I feel in China: like an outsider looking in at people he loves dearly.
> 
> To the people I baited with the Pynch tag, I know there's not much Pynch in here. I'm working on a larger Pynch fic right now (a slime rancher AU, 10,000 words and counting), but I'm wrapping up my trip to China, and this one just needed to get out, I think.


End file.
